The narrow-laned speedway that leads from Palermo Airport at Punta Raisi to the city centre should, if one excepts the many villas evidencing unsightly urban sprawl and the numerous semi-industrial developments of questionable architectonic value, offer a beguiling view of Palermo’s much-lauded Conca d’Oro – a range of hills surrounding the city in a semi-circle – on the right hand side, and the equally seductive view of the Tyrrhenian Sea to one’s left. And yet, to most Sicilians travelling along this obligatory road to their regional capital, this short journey transits brusquely from a welcoming conduit to their homeland into a spine-chilling reminder of the horrific murder of the Italian Judge Giovanni Falcone and members of his police escort in May 1992.
At the time, I had just set foot in the country of my birth, arriving on a night train from Vienna to Venice. I still remember how the hurt and shame of that horror hit me that day, dimming even the intense light of La Serenissima, resplendent in the sunshine of late spring and turning the Laguna into a slough of despond. The question that gnawed at the very core of my being, the inexhaustible source of self-loathing and shame, was to explain, to comprehend how it was possible for human beings born and raised in the same place as I had to be the authors and accessories of a crime of such unnatural vileness and cowardice to make the leaves of every tree on my native island curl in revulsion.
The bitter lesson I learned that day is one that runs against the most enduring tenet of my Catholic upbringing: the sacredness of all human life. That day I learned that some human beings do not deserve to share the earth with us. That day I learned the justice of Hannah Arendt’s verdict in Eichmann in Jerusalem that the henchmen of the German Nazi Dictatorship did not deserve to live – that against human beasts capable of such enormous crimes against humanity the only realistic, sensible and just action to take was to secure their total and definitive annihilation. Human beings who turn evil into a banality do not deserve to live. They, together with their leaders, deserve to be reduced to innocuity – to be exterminated. This “extermination” must not be read necessarily in a literal sense. What I mean by the term “extermination” is that not only the leadership of a political unit, but also its entire fellowship or membership has to be reduced to the point of absolute harmlessness. They must be exterminated in the sense that their evil ferocity can no longer pose a threat to human kind.
Far from showing condescension or even offering forgiveness, against the most basic teaching of Christianity, all humans of good will must have no truck, do no deals, leave no quarter and spare no hatred to the evil-doers of the Mafia. They must die. We must destroy them. And when we have killed them, we must leave no physical remains for burial. Contra Bob Dylan (in “Masters of War”), we shall not even “sit on their graves” to ensure that they are dead: like Hitler and many of his henchmen, there must be no graves.
Right now, the one identifiable global Mafia threatening the entire ecumene – our entire civilisation and physical existence – is the Han Chinese Mafia headed by the Rat-in-Chief Xi Jin Ping. He and his entire dictatorship must be physically eliminated and annihilated. Let no human of good will make the unpardonable error to distinguish between “government” and “people”. We know all too well that the Han Chinese race, as a direct beneficiary of the evil deeds of their truculent leaders, are complicit in their evil doings, I their truculence, murder, bestiality, dishonesty, treachery. They, too, must be subjugated and reduced to harmlessness: THEY MUST BE EXTERMINATED. And this injunction must last until such time as this evil race is rendered entirely innocuous so that they can no longer inspire in us “the fear to have my baby, unnamed and unborn” (Dylan again). Cheers to all.
At the time, I had just set foot in the country of my birth, arriving on a night train from Vienna to Venice. I still remember how the hurt and shame of that horror hit me that day, dimming even the intense light of La Serenissima, resplendent in the sunshine of late spring and turning the Laguna into a slough of despond. The question that gnawed at the very core of my being, the inexhaustible source of self-loathing and shame, was to explain, to comprehend how it was possible for human beings born and raised in the same place as I had to be the authors and accessories of a crime of such unnatural vileness and cowardice to make the leaves of every tree on my native island curl in revulsion.
The bitter lesson I learned that day is one that runs against the most enduring tenet of my Catholic upbringing: the sacredness of all human life. That day I learned that some human beings do not deserve to share the earth with us. That day I learned the justice of Hannah Arendt’s verdict in Eichmann in Jerusalem that the henchmen of the German Nazi Dictatorship did not deserve to live – that against human beasts capable of such enormous crimes against humanity the only realistic, sensible and just action to take was to secure their total and definitive annihilation. Human beings who turn evil into a banality do not deserve to live. They, together with their leaders, deserve to be reduced to innocuity – to be exterminated. This “extermination” must not be read necessarily in a literal sense. What I mean by the term “extermination” is that not only the leadership of a political unit, but also its entire fellowship or membership has to be reduced to the point of absolute harmlessness. They must be exterminated in the sense that their evil ferocity can no longer pose a threat to human kind.
Far from showing condescension or even offering forgiveness, against the most basic teaching of Christianity, all humans of good will must have no truck, do no deals, leave no quarter and spare no hatred to the evil-doers of the Mafia. They must die. We must destroy them. And when we have killed them, we must leave no physical remains for burial. Contra Bob Dylan (in “Masters of War”), we shall not even “sit on their graves” to ensure that they are dead: like Hitler and many of his henchmen, there must be no graves.
Right now, the one identifiable global Mafia threatening the entire ecumene – our entire civilisation and physical existence – is the Han Chinese Mafia headed by the Rat-in-Chief Xi Jin Ping. He and his entire dictatorship must be physically eliminated and annihilated. Let no human of good will make the unpardonable error to distinguish between “government” and “people”. We know all too well that the Han Chinese race, as a direct beneficiary of the evil deeds of their truculent leaders, are complicit in their evil doings, I their truculence, murder, bestiality, dishonesty, treachery. They, too, must be subjugated and reduced to harmlessness: THEY MUST BE EXTERMINATED. And this injunction must last until such time as this evil race is rendered entirely innocuous so that they can no longer inspire in us “the fear to have my baby, unnamed and unborn” (Dylan again). Cheers to all.
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